A blackness inwardly brightening With sullen heat, As a storm-cloud lurid with lightning. As the reverberation Of cloud answering unto cloud, Swells and rolls away in the distance, Lightning retreated, Baffled and thwarted by the wind's resistance. It is Lucifer, The son of mystery; And since God suffers him to be, He, too, is God's minister, And labors for some good By us not understood! SHOULD you ask me, With the dew and damp of meadows, From the land of the Dacotahs, From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands, Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, Feeds among the reeds and rushes. I repeat them as I heard them From the lips of Nawadaha, Should you ask where Nawadaha "All the wild-fowl sang them to him, In the moorlands and the fen-lands, In the melancholy marshes; "And the pleasant water-courses, Ye who love the haunts of Nature, Love the sunshine of the meadow, Love the shadow of the forest, |